


An Ode to An Epic

by marreena



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/F, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 13:09:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10900005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marreena/pseuds/marreena
Summary: “I just want to know the nature of your relationship with Lup, Lucretia.”It is an order from his mouth that Lucretia is very aware that she has to follow and even in her morally guided heart she does have to acquiesce to her superior and in reality she should have revealed this information ages ago, but as she tightens her grip on her journals, the words are gone.What is her relation to Lup?





	An Ode to An Epic

**Author's Note:**

> i asked for some prompts on tumblr for lupcretia and [isolatedphenomenon](http://isolatedphenomenon.tumblr.com/) hit me up with how the crew reacts to them...which is not the main focus of this fic oops

Taako is the first to notice. 

Lucretia is not surprised to note this, and she had even assumed that maybe he would notice it sooner than he did. Maybe it’s because his own eye has started to drift on its own to others on the ship so his gaze no longer lingers solely on his sister, but still, she feels like the crush and _more_  development between her and Lup is glaringly obvious. 

Lup is tactile, sure, everyone has gotten used to her hands in their own or her arm around shoulders or even their waist. 

It is a different type of tactile when Lup is with her. Her hands still drift to every part of her body and even try to thread their fingers together while Lucretia is just trying to record the new work out reports provided by Magnus on the crew’s wellbeing. She has to stop, switch her pen to her other hand and accept that she will have to finish copying the report in her other notebook later. It is worth it for Lup leaning into her side and pressing her smile into her shoulder. 

_That_ , that is normal, and could, most likely given a few exceptions, happen to anyone on the ship. Lup at the end of the day needs to be able to touch and while Taako had filled that need before, Lup is enjoying having five new people to toy with. What is different with Lucretia, and especially now that they are— _a thing_? Dating seems too formal and anything that Lup has offered has been to crass to pass Lucretia’s own lips—together, is that Lup seeks for Lucretia to touch her as well. 

Like a dog tipping its head for an owner to pet it, Lup will tilt, leave her side open or her thigh within reach of Lucretia, hoping that her wandering hand that needs to toy with something if it does not have a pen will land place just _on her_. 

And so Lucretia does, filling both of their needs with just one touch.

Her left hand drifts to Lup’s thigh, toying with the trim of her shorts, rolling the hem between her fingers and feeling the individual threads and trying to picture it in her mind as she mindlessly writes. Her fingers also trail over Lup’s own thighs, stopping to trace scars and moles alike. Anything that is raised and that catches her fingertips is fair game. She sometimes even just traces the muscle of her leg if it’s tensed from working out earlier. 

Either way, Lup lives for her touch. 

As she traces paths on her uneven skin, goose bumps rise up and she traces those too. Switching from the pad of her finger to the nail. 

(It’s just on her thighs when they are in public spaces, but when they’re in private, Lup loves to take off her shirt and insist on Lucretia giving her a massage or scratching her back. She had asked her once, in private, if Lup didn’t like to be touched anywhere, if there were limits to their relationship, and she had laughed, brighter than the bulb that Barry had recently replaced in the bathroom that surprised and warmed Lucretia. 

_If I don’t want you to touch me, Luc, you know something is very wrong_.) 

And while maybe it is true that Taako eyes were drifted elsewhere when her own hands had been tracing stars into his sister’s skin, she still expects for him to notice it by the third time that they are together, not the fifth. 

It’s instantaneous and Lup doesn’t notice a second. 

Lup enters the mess room after spending nearly the entire day hunched over research with Barry and three cups of coffee that Magnus had made them and nearly collapses into Lucretia’s side while Taako is at the counter trying to find the secret to Magnus’ biscuits and gravy. Lucretia had taken note of both of their recipes and had offered to tell him what the difference was, but he had insisted that his own tongue would know much better than her eyes and that had been that and that had also led to Taako mulling in the kitchen for a week. 

However, it is his eyes that take in Lup taking Lucretia’s arm and wrapping it around her, burying her face in the crook on her neck and sighing in exhaustion. It is his eyes that widen in realization. It is his mouth that shuts tightly. 

His mouth doesn’t stay shut for long, it seems, by the next the day Magnus is watching them with wide eyes trying to catch the hints that Taako had told him. 

All it takes is for Lup to narrow her eyes at him, without even knowing why his gaze was lingering on them, for Magnus to immediately turn tail and retreat from any advances, accepting that Taako’s own judgement and word was enough for him. Surprisingly not forward enough to actually confront them on the issue at hand.

She fears that this thing— _private_  ended up being a good word for them, still hesitant to put anything more to it, that even _Lucretia_  herself cannot think of a proper word, other than one describing that this thing is entirely their own and no one else’s—is about to become, exactly, _not private_. 

Magnus Burnsides is undoubtably a young, human, man—as if Lucretia could really put emphasis on young as physically she also resembled a twenty year old human—and has the tongue of such. A tongue that yearns to spill out words and loose lips that have only been encouraged by those on the ships. Secrets a forgone venture considering that most on the ship are within a fifty meter radius at all times. 

Lucretia had never brought up what would happen when others found out—a hopeful and foolish thing that she wished no one would find out. Undoubtable ignorance in her thinking that Lup could be subtle for more than a month or so regarding _them_ —although there was plenty of plausible deniability in their relationship. They had always had a close relationship and maybe even few on the ship witnessed and acknowledged that it was flirtatious in nature. There were plenty of places for Lucretia to fall back on if Lup were say uncomfortable with other’s finding out about their relationship. 

Lucretia had already mapped out plenty of solutions.

Lucretia had already been working on more ways to define their relationship other than it being their _private thing_ , especially after it becomes their  _not-_ private thing.  

She felt guilty and maybe even disingenuous looking up references in other novels, in other romances for what their relationship could be defined as. It’s _private_  and totally and entirely _theirs_  so looking to others for references on her romance—she notes, that this is her first time actually thinking of it as such, _a romance_ , and good god, is she as embarrassingly giddy as ever holding the _romance_  novels in her hands. 

Lucretia herself is a writer—she should be able to wax poetry into the next cycle just on the curling warmth that licks down her spine every time Lup cups her cheek and lazily runs her lips across her nose and then her cheekbones and her eyes but never quite reaching her lips. A ghost of laughter on Lup’s lips as Lucretia follows her and chases her lips. 

An ode would be even better. Lucretia could practically feel the words tipping at her lips, begging to fall from her own lips and onto the page to merely attempt to encompass the amount of overwhelming passion that drips from Lup in just one of their exchanges. A dedication to Lup would be sufficient, but Lucretia balks at the time it would take to write all that Lup is, and she fears that in the end, she is nothing short of an epic. 

So when Davenport stands in front of her, even while she clutches a journal to her chest and containing not at all intimate details of her relationship and is actually research that she’s been summarizing for Barry with Merle in the background, peeking through the doorway with not an ounce of guilt in his heart, Lucretia freezes. Her mouth is dry and every bit of her that wanted to dedicate the rest of her life to writing an epic center on Lup, quiets down and offers not one ounce of help, not even a single word. 

He clears his throat, gaze unwavering as a captain should be, and repeats himself, “I just want to know the nature of your relationship with Lup, Lucretia.” 

It is an order from his mouth that Lucretia is very aware that she has to follow and even in her morally guided heart she does have to acquiesce to her superior and in reality she should have revealed this information ages ago, but as she tightens her grin on her journals, the words are gone. 

What _is_ her relation to Lup? 

To state that their relation is entirely physical like some of the others on the ship is underwhelming and maybe even overstating it at the same time. Anything more besides the basic facts feels like she is betraying the very essence of their _relation._ Not to mention it is not entirely up to her to make this decision of what words to use and feels incredibly selfish of herself to define it on her own with no consolation with Lup. 

“That is private, sir,” and it leaves her mouth as if all the other words had finally made her lips as loose as Taako’s or Magnus’ or Merle's. The gaping shock and utter _joy_  on Merle’s face as he watches this unfold is irritating to say the least, but her gaze remains on Davenport as he takes in her response. She desperately looks at the way he responds—any sort of physical indicators to help her know how he is taking her impromptu and brash response. 

He narrows his eyes once, and Lucretia waits as her throat swells in shame, before he nods, “Of course it is, I would just prefer it that next time that you disclose this information to me as it could become sensitive to the mission. You two can do… _whatever_ , I haven’t stopped anyone else and I will not stop you. Just consider this a warning, Lucretia.” 

And he’s gone. 

She lets out a breath that she had been holding for nearly a minute and returns to her room after slipping a note under Lup’s door—a note that she will probably not see for a couple hours as she’s been working late with Barry to find if there is a way to track the light’s magic signature. So Lucretia goes and sits at her desk and pulls out some of her previous journals and reads over them. 

What would she call even what she is doing now? Reading over her past entries regarding _Lup_  and _her and Lup_. It’s reassuring definitely, to be able to read the words that Lup has used regarding her and both of their actions. There’s a part of her during the beginning of their thing that Lucretia had been almost certain that maybe she was reading into things. Lup certainly flirted with quite a lot of people, she touched a lot of people, so what made Lucretia _different?_  

It is obvious now and Lucretia is thankful for that—it puts her heart and mind at ease. 

Still, reading over the entries, she cannot think of a perfect word to flow off the tongue. Instead, she finds hundreds, _thousands_  of words the perfectly encompass who they are. Words that she has already said, the Lup has said and that Lucretia has recorded for posterity and that she is willingly to repeat again and again.

There is a knock on her door and before she can even answer, Lup pops her head in, quickly glancing around before her eyes land on her. She’s absolutely exhausted and a pang runs through Lucretia. It’s selfish of her to want to define this when everything between them has been going fine so far, and if Lup _wanted_ to define it then she would have at this point. 

Lup grins at her before slipping in, “Just making sure you weren’t in the nude,” she then winks.

“That would have not stopped you,” Lucretia points out and moves some of her journals off of her desk so that she can sit on it. 

Lup doesn’t and instead just leans against it and then leans over her, hugging her from behind and pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Damn right. Whatchya working on, honey baby?” 

“Just reviewing and reading over things,” she tells her and cranes her neck just a bit to allow for Lup to press a kiss to her neck. 

She can feel Lup’s grin against her neck, “Mm, babe, I know that’s entries ‘bout us. You reading the porn you wrote about us or what?” 

Lucretia wrinkles her nose and nudges Lup, “Of course not, I didn’t write _that_  down. It’s not professional.”

She can almost feel her eye rolls, “Course, Luc, me going down on you isn’t professional but every single endearment I’ve ever called you is.” 

She closes that journal and turns to look at her, and Lucretia has to cup her cheek and brush her thumb over the bags underneath her eye. She looks absolutely exhausted and she wants nothing more than to kiss her and then tuck her into bed. “You should go to bed,” she presses.

Lup snorts and pulls away, stretching and Lucretia eyes immediately fall to the small bit of skin at her waist exposed by that. She grins and tugs her shirt back down, “I’ll sleep after I get some food in me—you think Mags left me some of that soup he made?”

She nods—he always made sure to set out a portion of his own food for Lup or Taako to try. 

They stay for a minute, just looking at each other, and it isn’t awkward for either of them. Instead there’s just a warm fondness seeping into the moment as Lup’s hand plays with her own. “You coming?” she asks, tugging on her hand just a bit. 

“Of course,” and she straightens her journals before getting up. 

And just maybe, as they join hands and Lup brings her hand up to kiss it, does Lucretia accept that while she cannot exactly define what it is between them one word it is alright. What they have is entirely theirs and while the terms _girlfriend_  and _lover_  trip out of her mouth and get tangled in her lips unsure what one fits them best, she can recognize a love that is entirely theirs. 

As sappy as it is and with each page of her journal dripping with more and more saccharine as Lup’s epic naturally forms whether Lucretia realizes it or not, she is fine sitting in kitchen with Lup heating up soup before slipping into her lap to eat it, not bothered by the wandering gaze of Taako anymore. 

**Author's Note:**

> barry's reaction isn't in this because lup told him like 8 cycles ago that her and luc were fucking and he was like "i mean okay thanks for the update" 
> 
> as always hmu @[trustlup](http://trustlup.tumblr.com)


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